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Mill, Method, and the Art of Life

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Mill, Method, and the Art of Life Mill, Method, and the Art of Life The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Beaumont, Tim John. 2016. Mill, Method, and the Art of Life. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493435 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Mill, Method, and the Art of Life A dissertation presented by Tim John Beaumont to The Department of Government in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2016 © 2016 Tim Beaumont All rights reserved. Advisor: Richard Tuck Tim John Beaumont Mill, Method, and the Art of Life Abstract For John Stuart Mill, the art to which all others lie subordinate is “the Art of Life, in its three departments, Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Aesthetics; the Right, the Expedient, and the Beautiful or Noble, in human conduct and works.” Though “the reasonings which connect the end or purpose of every art with its means, belongs to the domain of Science”, he tells us, “the definition of the end itself belongs exclusively to Art, and forms its peculiar province.” This thesis uses analytical methods, de dicto and de re interpretation, and rational reconstruction, to unlock the fundamental axiological and existential premises at the heart of Mill’s Art of Life. In so doing it reveals the way in which these premises simultaneously: combine with Mill’s political science to help to produce his favored synthesis of liberalism, socialism, and democracy; threaten to destabilize this synthesis from within; and point the way towards a stable resolution. For Mill, the Art of Life is a search for the appropriate quasi-Platonic balance between Morality, Nobility, and Prudence, with Morality leading without dominating the remainder. In consequence, an Art of Life, as thus conceived, can fail in any of three ways, corresponding to the assignment of undue scope to any one department at the expense of the others. In the case of Prudence, Mill warns that a narrow egoism can lead one to instrumentalize, and thereby become alienated from, the activities and people that give one’s life meaning. Life meaning is best found by self-improvement (Nobility) in ways which benefit others (Morality). However, for this meaning to be self-sustaining, and immune from analytical subversion, Nobility and Morality must be cultivated emotionally as well as intellectually. Some Marxist critics have questioned whether Mill’s Art achieves such a balance, by suggesting that its high-minded Nobility and Morality is a veneer for crude class egoism (Prudence). By contrast, a more Nietzschean concern is that a hedonistic Art of Life falsifies the self-interest iii (Prudence) of suffering creators, on the one hand, and favors painless cultural mediocrity (Ignobility), on the other. While Mill’s qualitative ranking of pleasures can block the second concern, his attendant commitment to a qualitative ranking of pains may appear to exacerbate the first. However, it is shown that the real concern should be that these qualitative rankings generate a de re commitment to a quasi- Schopenhauerian, and nihilistically negative, devaluation of the world. This conclusion is reinforced by an examination of Mill’s writings on religion and theodicy, which reveals Mill’s de dicto commitment to contradictory global evaluations of the world as such. This axiological contradiction at the heart of Mill’s Art of Life raises the question of whether his system should be reconstructed so as to resolve the contradiction by affirming or rejecting the global nihilistic devaluation. It may appear that Mill’s occasional optimism, and progressive political principles, require an anti-nihilistic axiological foundation. However, we see that the latter actually destabilizes his political synthesis, by generating an immanent rationale for allowing the promotion of higher culture to trump universal rights to security, thereby allowing Nobility to trump Morality in the Art of Life. By contrast, a nihilistic resolution of the contradiction provides a surprisingly strong foundation for his progressive political philosophy, and a route to reconciling Nobility with Morality. On the one hand, Mill’s theory of punishment renders a nihilistic devaluation of the world compatible with life-affirmation, and frees his Utilitarianism from having to ‘pass sentence on existence’. And on the other, a nihilistic devaluation opens the door to reconciling Mill’s robust defense of a universal right to security, and refusal to support slavery as a means to promoting higher culture, with his willingness to promote higher forms of life at the price of popular discontent, and restrictions on majoritarian democracy. If the highest pains outrank the highest pleasures, they devalue the world while opening the door to a form of Morality which prioritizes their minimization or elimination. However, this is also a form of Morality with the Nobility to promote the cultivation of individuals capable of the highest pleasures, when the only price to be paid consists of the ire, offense, or ressentiment of those Mill refers to as ‘the herd’. iv CONTENTS Abstract iii Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION: MILL’S ART OF LIFE AND SYSTEMATIC THOUGHT 1 CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION HISTORICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE ART OF INTERPRETATION 12 Introduction: From the Art of Life to Interpretive Method PART I: Methodological Prolegomena 17 (A) First- and Second-Order Intellectual History 19 (A.1) The Belief-Claim Distinction 19 (A.2) Belief and Claim Attribution 22 (A.2.A) Skinner on Claim Attribution 23 (A.2.B) Belief Attributions and Metaphysical Interpretationalism 25 (A.3) Behavioral Patterns and Kinds of Belief 30 (A.4) Ideational Commensurability 37 (B) Historical Philosophy I: System Construction 38 (B.1) Brandom on Inferential Significance and Context 38 (B.2) De Dicto System Construction 40 (B.2.A) The Corpus as Inferential Context 40 (B.2.B) The Role of Formal Argumentation 43 (B.3) De Re System Construction 45 (B.3.A) De Re Attribution 46 (B.3.B) Cohen on Field Analysis and Philosophical Disagreement 47 (C) Historical Philosophy II: System Reconstruction 50 (C.1) From System Construction to System Reconstruction 50 (C.2) Evaluating Reconstructions 54 (C.3) System Reconstruction and ‘Man’s Preciousness to Man’ 57 v PART II: Thesis Summary 62 (A) Methodological Applications 63 (B) The Role of Mill’s Art of Life in his Philosophical System 69 CHAPTER 2: DE DICTO SYSTEM CONSTRUCTION I THE ELEMENTS OF MILL’S TELEOLOGICAL ETHICS 73 Introduction 73 (A) What is Hedonism? 75 (B) Motivational Hedonism 76 (C) Normative Hedonism I: Value, Welfare, and Happiness 79 (C.1) Value Hedonism and Welfare Hedonism 79 (C.2) Felicific Hedonism 81 (D) Mill’s Normative Epistemology 82 (E) Normative Hedonism II: Qualitative and Quantitative Value Hedonism 88 (E.1) Quantitative Hedonism 88 (E.2) Mill’s Qualitative Hedonism 90 (F) The Art of Life 97 (G) Utilitarianism and the Life of Morality 99 (H) Mill’s Formal Theory of Justice and Rights 103 CHAPTER 3: DE DICTO SYSTEM CONSTRUCTION II MILL’S PHILOSOPHY OF HIS MENTAL CRISIS 107 Introduction 107 (A) Doubts about the Intelligibility of Mill’s Account of his Mental Crisis 110 (A.1) The Individual Nihilism Objection to Hedonistic Monism 111 (A.2) The Specter of Nihilism in Mill’s Account of his Mental Crisis 112 (B) Alternative Methodological Approaches for Interpreting Mill’s Autobiography 115 (B.1) Reasons for Methodological Skepticism 116 (B.1.A) The Historical Unreliability of the Autobiography 116 (B.1.B) The ‘Joint Authorship’ of the Autobiography 117 (B.2) Autobiography as Political Theory 118 vi (C) Mill on the pursuit and attainment of goods 120 (C.1) The Eating-Fullness Analogy 123 (C.2) Seeking a Disanalogy 124 (C.2.A) Attempt 1 124 (C.2.B) Attempt 2 127 (C.3) The Feedback and Significance Theses 128 (C.4) The Role of Excellence and the Common Good 130 (C.5) Feedback, Higher Pleasure, and Meaning in Life 132 (C.6) The Solution to the Pursuit-Attainment Puzzle 133 (D) Mill’s Anti-Instrumentalism & Practical Anti-Hedonism 134 (D.1) The Logic of Anti-Instrumentalism 138 (D.2) The Logic of Practical Anti-Hedonism 140 (D.2.A) The Argument 140 (D.2.B) Formal Analysis 141 (D.3) Mill’s Anti-Instrumentalism & Practical Anti-Hedonism as a Response to his Crisis: A Provisional Explanation 142 (D.4) Mill on the Relationship between Happiness, Pleasure, and Objects 143 (D.4.A) Pleasure in Objects 144 (D.4.B) Aiming for Pleasure in Objects without Aiming for Happiness 145 (D.5) Instrumentalism and Practical Hedonism as Causes of the Crisis 151 (D.5.A) Hedonic Ineffectiveness 152 (D.5.B) Hedonic Counter-productiveness – the ‘Danger’ of Analysis 154 (E) Qualifying Mill’s Practical Hedonism and Opposition to Analysis 157 (E.1) Reasons for Interpretive Caution 158 (E.1.A) Falsehood 158 (E.1.B) Can people not be both happy and analytical? 158 (E.1.C) Does Mill recommend self-delusion? 158 (E.2) Qualifying Mill’s Practical Anti-Hedonism 159 (F) Mill’s Autobiography and his Art of Life 161 vii CHAPTER 4: DE DICTO SYSTEM CONSTRUCTION III MILLER’S ‘MARXIAN’ CRITIQUE OF MILL’S NORMATIVE EPISTEMOLOGY
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